Politics and Virtue Signalling

[unspeakablehorror]

I think there is purpose in signalling one's beliefs for its own sake,  but I also think that the extent to which this permeates a lot of online  conversations really is a waste.  There's just only so much value in  communicating 'I believe X' in and of itself.  It's helpful because it  can help you find like-minded people and it can be reassuring to people,  but I think it's important not to convince oneself that it's a purely  good thing.  It's good to the extent that the people you associate with  don't have such glaring disagreements with you that you end up feeling  like you just can't connect with them on the important matters of life,  or collaborate with them on any useful endeavor.  It's good to the  extent that you can avoid pointless and draining debates.

But a  lot of stuff is just--well, it's just people kind of smugly patting  themselves and their friends on the back for having the right beliefs  and I just don't think that's a mindset that's very conducive to  worthwhile progress in any area at all.  Because we need to discover  flaws in our beliefs and gaps in our understanding of the world if we  want to make the highest impact positive change on that world that we  possibly can.  To me the ideal is being able to discuss things with  friends in ways that allow both parties to increase each other's  understanding of the world and be more effective at whatever it is we  are trying to do.  And so to do that, it has to be possible to discuss  disagreements, even over important things, without it being a  friend-ending experience.  In practice--this is usually impossible, or  so seemingly perilous and fraught that a person might simply feel unable  to deal with the possible repurcussions.  You can't just go out to the  store and buy new friends, after all.  Well, most of us can't anyway.

I  guess what I'm trying to get at here is that a lot of 'political  discussion' actually just seems like worthless feel-good fluff,  sometimes even so insistent on lockstep agreement that it becomes  cultlike, whether or not there's any kind of commonly recognized  'religion' behind it.  And before anyone starts thinking of that kind of  problem exclusively in groups whose politics they oppose, I want to say  that I think this can happen with any belief-set, even with whatever  philosophy or beliefs are ultimately 'good' in this world (good in  quotes here because what does it all mean, anyway, haha).  What I'm  saying is, I don't think that we should necessarily assume that a.) a  person who has 'good' beliefs about some things will have 'good' beliefs  about others, and b.) a person having 'good' beliefs is necessarily  doing anything valuable with that 'goodness' or that it's not possible  for them to even work against their own priorities.

Comments

[chamerion]

Hard agree that a lot of online political discussion feels performative (and at times more than a little cult-y), and that this issue crops up all across the political spectrum. I say this a lot so I always feel like a bit of a broken record, but I think absolute certainty of one's own goodness is often the first step toward pretty bad actions - if you know you're Good you never have to self-interrogate, which effectively removes one of the best checks against not-so-great choices and beliefs - and I feel kneejerk wary of people and communities that don't seem to have any room for dissent or doubt.

On the other hand I also see a lot of bad faith discussion that derides any discussion of politics no matter how thoughtful or earnest (or more accurately, usually any discussion of politics that the speakers disagree with) as "virtue signalling," to the point that I've also developed kind of a kneejerk distaste for that phrase! It frequently seems to get used the way "political correctness" often does - to dismiss concerns about bigotry or injustice as insincere and motivated only by desire for social status.

Not that this doesn't sometimes happen, and not that I think you're using it that way, but I guess it's just one more example of how frustrating internet political discussions can be.

[unspeakablehorror]

Yeah, I can definitely understand having negative reactions to certain terms that get bandied about a lot, and virtue signalling is definitely one of those! I mean, especially in terms of people using it to try to convey that it's a purely bad thing. Or if it's just being used as a synonym for 'political correctness', which is a term that always gets my hackles up.

I think there is value in discussing what someone believes without necessarily going into the why, which is what I think 'virtue signalling' is, but I agree that specific term seems to have a very negative connotation. On the other hand, 'political correctness' seems to only be used by conservatives to criticize leftist beliefs for--being more correct (yes, I know this is not what's really being said there, but I couldn't help myself haha)? Joking aside, I really can't think of a situation where 'political correctness' is typically used by leftists to criticize conservatives or even other leftists, so it seems like a specifically conservative dogwhistle to me. Whereas with virtue signalling, as you said, the criticism is about insincerity, which can, yes, be a way to dismiss concerns about bigotry as insincere, but does also seem to be used to criticize behavior where the underlying assumptions of the person seem to be ignoring their own contribution to the problem they profess to be against. For example, I often get put off by people explicitly demanding to be called out or say, a man talking about how feminist he is. I would categorize both of those behaviors as virtue signalling, and I would also feel critical about them, not because I don't want people to be open to criticism or because I don't want men to support feminism, but because the way they are being communicated to me implies either 1. a sincerity issue or 2. a deep lack of understanding the issue and/or self-introspection (really more likely 2, but regardless I think it's a problem). Still, I'm not overly attached to the term virtue signalling--I don't think it needs to be 'saved' as some usable term if it has too many negative associations attached, or if its usage has become too muddled.

For me, I just think it's important to discuss the difference between saying what one's beliefs are and backing those statements up. This overlaps but is not quite the same as discussions about status-seeking and how that's become a common blanket accusation to make against people the accuser doesn't agree with or even just doesn't like (for me, I usually see this expressed as an accusation that the person is just seeking 'clout' and not as 'virtue signalling', but I wouldn't be surprised if there are people who view those those terms as interchangeable).

And yeah, I agree that internet political discussions can be extremely frustrating for a lot of reasons.